A challenge to our beliefs

1:58 PM,
Dec. 6, 2013

Thomas Sowell

Written by

Thomas Sowell
Columnist

Depressing news about black students scoring far below white students on various mental tests has become so familiar that people in different parts of the ideological spectrum have long ago developed their different explanations for why this is so. But both may have to do some rethinking, in light of radically different news from England.

The Nov. 9-15 issue of the distinguished British magazine The Economist reports that, among children who are eligible for free meals in England's schools, black children of immigrants from Africa meet the standards of school tests nearly 60 percent of ...